All we want are the facts.

We need to stop arguing about policy and focus on stating facts. Jeff at Protein Wisdom has amply illustrated how foolish it is for us to continue playing the left’s rhetorical games, where objective facts and truth are first under the bus. We spent the entire Bush administration listening -and for the most part, not arguing with – “selected, not elected.” This, in spite of the fact that Gore’s legal team was pushing for an unequal recount (and did Al Franken ever learn that lesson; unfortunately, Coleman did not) and that after the election, the media recounted and concluded Bush had won. It doesn’t matter. Google “bush won the 2000 election media recount” and find myriad left-leaning websites complaining that the media recount was unfair; Gore really won yet the media is spinning for Bush. Because that’s what the press does – spin for the GOP. Riiiiight.

Obama plays fast and loose with history, and it’s accepted as gospel by his acolytes. Conservatives make a pro forma protest, but quickly move on to the next outrage, and the charges don’t stick. Sarah Palin is viciously attacked from all sides. When Zeigler challenges a reporter to provide specific reasons why she deserves this treatment, Mike Allen, the reporter, can’t provide a clear answer. But “everyone knows” that Sarah Palin is an idiot who should be run out of public life on a rail. (If it’s so obvious, why can’t they explain?)

There are a million examples of narrative overtaking facts. It’s continually reported that 90% of Mexican guns are from the U.S. Untrue. It’s confidently stated that single payer systems provide superior health care. Untrue. It’s conventional wisdom, hammered in continually by politicians and press, that there are at least 47 million uninsured Americans. Untrue. It’s suggested that while there are (a few, rare, anecdotal) problems with single-payer in other countries, it’s never been tried here and obviously we would do better. Untrue.

We cannot possibly defeat the left’s ideology until we win the battle for language and facts. Mark Tapscott took the time to rearrange some deck chairs, and there are some interesting comments in response to that. But there’s little use in worrying about style if we’re not going to address substance effectively. We don’t have a level playing field to present conservative ideology. Until we forcefully engage with the left on the core problems of language and facts, we don’t have a chance of turning things around.

The activist left has no problem launching disingenuous attacks. And why would they? We’ve shown a striking unwillingness to fight back, deciding instead to opt for a kind of linguistic “realism” that looks at the current state of affairs and throws up its hands in surrender.

So when I say that we need to stop arguing about policy and focus on stating facts, I mean this: the next time someone you know claims we need to solve the health care crisis right now! don’t engage in an argument listing the reasons why single payer is more expensive, less innovative, and costs lives. Forget the public option and the slippery slope. Start by showing why it’s not a crisis at all. There aren’t 47 million uninsured Americans. There are about 8 million uninsured Americans.

We need to hammer that home and show the dishonesty of those making the arguments. It’s truthful, it takes the energy out of your opponent’s fight, and builds distrust against those who keep repeating the lie. George Will very effectively blocked Donna Brazile’s propaganda – no easy task! – using that technique here, after she cited 47 million and even tried to tack on an extra 20 million “underinsured.” Nor is not having health insurance, in a nation with EMTALA and hundreds of thousands of charity hospitals and clinics, equivalent to not receiving health care. Is something happening to 8 million people, in a country with a population of 304 million, a crisis? Of course not. When impeded, like water, Brazile flowed in an easier direction. Once it’s not a crisis, we can more easily, calmly, discuss ways to improve services and reduce prices – always laudable goals, and surely something on which the left and right agree. But not something taxpayers will tolerate nationalizing nearly 20% of the economy to try to do.

With cap and trade – don’t argue about who’s going to pay this massive energy tax, businesses or consumers. Don’t even waste time on the lack of real proof that man is causing global warming. Focus on the non-crisis of global warming and hammer home the points that temperatures and sea levels are not rising, ice is not shrinking, polar bears are not dying out, etc.

What we’ve got going for us: actual reality. Democrats are quickly running out of places to hide. They control it all now and the economy is theirs to fix – or not. Did I say Carter’s second term? We’re going to be nostalgic for Carter before this is over. And people will have no way to avoid knowing that Democratic – leftist – policies are what brought us back to our knees. Actual reality has a way of separating “facts” from facts. People are starting to catch on and figure out that though a policy may feel good, it doesn’t necessarily follow that it is good. We need to follow that up by pounding in the knowledge that a lot of those feel-good policies are based on lies and misinformation. So much of the left’s agenda is devoted to solving non-problems. We need to focus on pointing that out, and we do that by sticking to the facts. Once the leftist’s crisis-driven agenda is debunked, rational policy discussions can follow.